LAST TWO DAYS
On view through Tomorrow, Sunday, August 23, 2015
WILLIAM BAZIOTES: SURREALIST WATERCOLORS
Allentown Art Museum
31 North Fifth Street, Allentown, PA
How is it possible? The summer is nearly over
and so is the Baziotes show!
The museum notes “Baziotes (1912-1963) was an
important contributor to Abstract Expressionism who also upheld the mysterious,
dreamlike, and poetic aspects of Surrealism.”
In the Reading Eagle art critic Ron Schira wrote “This impressive exhibition of Baziotes' early work
offers insight toward understanding his enigmatic later work; the pieces are
painted lightly but the subject matter is dark in a bold, tragicomic irony.”
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| Figure with Sunlamp, 1936-39 |
These drawings are early, 1936 to
1939. They are pre-Abstract Expressionism and pre-World War II. It is
Surrealism of swimmers menaced by lightening, bulls raising their fists, and
struggling pictographs. Sometimes, however, there is a bizarre joie de vivre: sunbathing girls with multiple
body parts on city rooftops. The frequent use of gouache adds brightness and
intense color.
Greek-American William Baziotes (1912-1963) was
born in Pittsburgh and raised in Reading, Pennsylvania, where an early mentor
was the poet Byron Vazsakas. In 1931 Baziotes saw an exhibition of work by
Henri Matisse at the Museum of Modern Art. It was a defining experience and he
moved to New York City in 1933. He attended the National Academy of Design and
worked with Charles Curran, Ivan Olinsky, Gifford Beal, and Leon Kroll. He
graduated in 1936 and then worked on the Works Progress Administration. He was
a teacher at the Queens Museum of Art, 1936-38, and an easel painter, 1938-40.
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| Baziotes around 1940 |
In 1936 Baziotes met the surrealist Giorgio de
Chirico and he showed his work for the first time, at a group show at the
Municipal Art Gallery. By 1940 he knew Jimmy Ernst, Gordon Onslow-Ford, Gerome
Kamrowski, Andre Masson, Roberta Matta, and Jackson Pollock. Also in 1940
Baziotes exhibited with the surrealists in a group show at the New School.
Baziotes attended Stanley William Hayter’s
printmaking studio, Atelier 17, which opened its New York venue in 1940. It was
a gathering place for the European ex-patriots and the American modernists;
automatism was a frequently used technique and subject of endless discussion.
The work Collaborative Painting, an
exercise in automatism, made by Baziotes, Gerome Kamrowski, and Jackson
Pollock, is dated 1940-41.
In 1941 Baziotes married
Ethel Copstein; they lived in Morningside Heights. Also that year Matta
introduced Baziotes to Robert Motherwell. In 1942, at the invitation of Masson,
Baziotes showed with Motherwell and David Hare in the First Papers of Surrealism
show at the Whitelaw Reid Mansion. However, he was gradually drawn to
abstraction and eventually became one of The Irascible Eighteen (artists who
protested the more traditional views of the Metropolitan Museum of Art).
Baziotes’ first one-man show was at Peggy
Guggenheim’s Art of This Century Gallery in 1944. A show in 1946 at the Kootz
Gallery established representation that continued until 1958. In 1948, with
David Hare, Robert Motherwell, and Mark Rothko, Baziotes founded the Subjects
of the Artist School on East Eighth Street. He taught at the Brooklyn Museum
School, the Museum of Modern Art, Hunter College, and New York University.
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| Creature on Red Ground, 1936-39 |
In 1962 his work was in the landmark show Ten
American Painters at the Sydney Janis Gallery. In the 1965 the Guggenheim
Museum held a Memorial Exhibition.
In 2012 the Reading Public Museum held a 100th
Anniversary Exhibition, and William Baziotes, A Centennial Exhibition, Drawings
of the 1930s, was shown at the Susan Teller Gallery, New York, NY.
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#SubjectsoftheArtistSchool #TheIrascibleEighteen
